Mr. Chairman, I commend the member for Vancouver Island North for bringing forward this emergency debate. The issue has taken a human toll. It truly is an emergency that needs to be dealt with and that is why it was appropriate for him to bring this debate forward.
The Canadian softwood lumber industry exports about $11 billion a year to the United States. Almost half of that comes from British Columbia. The current countervail duty of 20% imposed by the United States amounts to $1 billion a year out of the British Columbia economy and $2 billion a year out of the Canadian economy.
Those are pretty big numbers for people to comprehend, but let us talk about the human toll. We have lost well over 15,000 jobs in British Columbia. The potential job loss across Canada is 25,000 and that number is expected to double by the end of the year. That will be 50,000 jobs in Canada alone.
It is critical that we have this discussion and move the ball forward to find a solution. Throughout the interior of British Columbia and on Vancouver Island we have many single industry communities that rely solely on the forest industry. These communities cannot survive and will become ghost towns if the issue is not resolved quickly.
The human toll will be enormous. It goes much deeper than just people losing their jobs. The 50,000 lost jobs can be exponentially increased to hundreds of thousands of Canadians that would be affected: workers, families and their children. Economic hardship is incredibly difficult for families.
The situation is in crisis proportion and it is an emergency that needs to be dealt with. We have been to the WTO and various international tribunals on three separate occasions. We have won every time but we need to do more.
Canada has a strong case. We are fighting this through every process. I applaud the minister for the pre-emptive strikes in regard to the raw log exports. That argument has been successfully taken away from the Americans. However the issue is so serious that our Prime Minister has to become directly involved with the president of the United States.
The current United States administration claims that it is a free trader: Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative, Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans and President Bush.
Now is the time when our Prime Minister should be holding their feet to the fire. We have every right to be going at them quite aggressively on this issue. Our Minister for International Trade and our Prime Minister had conversations with U.S. representatives. Our Prime Minister spoke with President Bush. He has even raised other issues such as energy, which was probably the appropriate place.
It is bad economic policy to start linking various commodities. We would go down a slippery slope if we were to look at the kind of overall trade we have with the United States.
Definitely we need to do more. The human toll is enormous, absolutely phenomenal. We have to be more aggressive on this issue and look for solutions.
The events that happened on September 11 have shaken all of us. They have affected our lives, how we feel and what we do. They have affected this dispute as well. It was not appropriate to discuss this issue in the weeks following the attacks. We needed to deal with the aftermath. We needed to support our friends to the south, to be there shoulder to shoulder. However I think this issue should be brought back to the table.
I thank the Minister for International Trade for being present for this debate. I also commend the member for Vancouver Island North who brought the debate forward. It was questioned earlier whether it should have been an emergency debate. It is an emergency. This is a crisis. Look at the job losses and the communities that are affected. Throughout British Columbia it is enormous.
There are a few hurdles in front of us as well. The protectionist forces in the United States will go to great lengths to lobby their government. We need to take them on.
The anti-dumping issue is coming up on October 15. We are expecting some kind of decision on the anti-dumping issue and if they come forward with that, it will be catastrophic against our industry.
Some $2 billion has been sucked out of our economy, but more important than the money, it has affected thousands of jobs, some 50,000 jobs. That is what hits home. It is creating a turmoil for hundreds of thousands of Canadians and their families.
I encourage the minister to do more at the head of state level and the ministerial level. The Prime Minister and the president, and the minister and his counterpart must be creative in finding solutions. We cannot back down. We know we are right, as he has stated before. We have been to the international tribunals.
If it takes a year or 18 months for the issue to wind its way through the international tribunals, I am afraid there will be nothing left to recover in some of our industries and the remote communities in Quebec, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia. That simply will not be good enough. Our government will be faced with a much greater crisis.
There are things we can do in getting involved at that level. The Americans are looking for help in oil and gas. I emphasize that it is not good public economic policy to make these direct links, but they are desperately looking for help in those areas. We should give it to them, but at the same time we should expect them to honour free trade and be the free traders they claim to be.